Royal Dutch Shell and the Nazi (updated with report of 4 day meeting between Deterding and Hitler)

More than 60 years after the demise of Nazi Germany, people apparently remain fascinated by the evil deeds of Adolf Hitler and his equally evil henchmen.

The new movie ‘Valkyrie‘ tells the story of the well-documented bomb plot against Hitler. Tom Cruise is in the lead role of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the patriotic aristocrat who unsuccessfully attempted to carry out the assassination. An article published in The Sunday Times on 4 January 2009 reviews a related book release: Valkyrie, by Philipp von Boeselager.

Another example of the current resurgent interest is the video clips on YouTube said to glorify Nazi troops. A Daily Telegraph article reports that the controversial clips have received “million of hits”.

What is less well known is the Royal Dutch Shell connection with Hitler and the Nazi. It is one of those episodes in Shell’s history, such as the recent multibillion-dollar reserves fraud, which the oil giant would prefer to forget.

The unfortunate association stemmed from the actions of a colossal figure in the history of the Royal Dutch Shell Group, Sir Henri Deterding, the ruthless Dutchman described as “THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD”, the title of a book written about the oil baron by Glyn Roberts. Deterding was the man responsible for founding the Royal Dutch Shell Group and was at the helm of the oil giant for 30 years. He was known as the “Napoleon of Oil”.

A Time Magazine article about the lunch of the Glyn Roberts book said: “Roberts thinks his backing for Hitler and his admiration for Mussolini are based on his hatred of communism…”

The association between Deterding and the Nazi was such that Hitler and Goering both sent wreaths to his funeral when Deterding died just before the outbreak of the 2nd World War. The Nazis propaganda machine exploited his funeral and also intended to exploit the circumstances of his death to gain control over the entire Royal Dutch Shell Group.

A New York Times article reported that as earlier as 1929, the Nazi had begun to try and make friends in Britain and a firmer bond had been established with “Sir Henri Deterding, the oil magnate, and his associates.”

The article with the sub-headline: “Hitler’s Terms for Control of Distribution Unsatisfactory to Royal Dutch and Shell” reported the content and outcome of a four day meeting between Hitler and his guest, Sir “Henry” Deterding, held at Berchtesgaden – Hitler’s mountain top retreat known as the Eagles Nest.

Second-The companies were to build a network of distributing stations along strategic motor roads, these buildings to be protected against air attacks.

Third-The companies were to invest their money, frozen in Germany, locally.

On 13 February 1939, Time Magazine published an article about the death of Sir Henri. It said that he “backed Hitler in Germany” and had “added a German residence to his English, Dutch and Swiss homes.”

Printed below are extracts from three books, which included extensive coverage of the Royal Dutch Shell connection with Hitler and the Nazi.

His influence on the company was erratic and as one Shell veteran recalls: ‘Deterding’s interventions were like thunderstorms; suddenly flattening a field of wheat, while leaving other fields un-scathed.’ The stately managers of Shell began to have the worrying impression that their Director-General was going mad, and still worse, going pro-Nazi. His anti-Communism, spurred on by his Russian second wife, had already made him sympathetic to the Nazis. But in 1936, just after he had celebrated his seventieth birthday and his fortieth year with Shell, he married a third time, to a German girl, Charlotte Knaack, who had been his secretary. He was now convinced that the Nazis were the only solution to the Communist menace.

He died six months before the outbreak of war: memorial services were held in all Shell offices in Germany and Hitler and Goering both sent wreaths to the funeral on his estate.

The outlook was grim and disheartening. Norway and Denmark were in German hands, France would surrender the following month, and Britain would stand alone, bearing the brunt of the war. No one was better suited than Churchill to lead his country through its “darkest hour.” No one better understood the critical role that oil would play, first in Britain’s very survival, and then in the prolonged conflict ahead.

The government also had to cope with a different kind of problem-the future of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The current management of the Group was no less concerned and apprehensive. For there was a risk that the Group could pass under the Nazi sway. The heart of the problem was Henri Deterding, the grand master of the company. He had continued to dominate the Group through the 192os. “Sir Henri’s word is law,” observed a British official in 1927.

“He can bind the Board of the Shell without their knowledge and consent.” But by the 1930s, Deterding’s grip on the company was slipping, and he was becoming an embarrassment to the management and a source of anxiety to the British government. His behavior was increasingly erratic, disruptive, megalomaniacal.

In the mid-1930s, as he entered his seventies, Deterding had developed two infatuations. One was for his secretary, a young German woman. The other was for Adolf Hitler. The determined Dutchman-who had gravitated to Britain before World War I, had been courted by Admiral Fisher and Winston Churchill, and had become a firm and fervent ally during that war-was now, in his old age, entranced with the Nazis.

On his own, Deterding initiated discussions in 1935 with the German government about Shell’s providing a year’s supply of oil-in effect, a military reserve-to Germany on credit. Rumors of these talks so greatly alarmed the Shell management in London that one of the senior directors, Andrew Agnew, asked the government to have the British embassy in Berlin investigate so that Agnew “could take suitable actions with his colleagues on the Board here in good time.”

Finally, retiring from Shell at the end of 1936, Deterding acted on both of his new infatuations. He divorced his second wife, married his German secretary, and went to live on an estate in Germany.

Deterding died in Germany in early 1939, six months before the war began. Strange and deeply disturbing rumors immediately reached London. Not only had the Nazis made much of his funeral, but they were also trying to take advantage of the circumstances of his death to gain control of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. That, of course, would have been a disaster for Great Britain. The company had virtually been Britain’s quartermaster general for oil during World War 1. Should it now pass under Nazi domination, Britain’s entire system of petroleum supply would be undermined. But it was discovered that the key “preference” shares, which embodied control, could only be held by directors, and at his demise, Deterding’s shares had been swiftly distributed to the other directors. At best, the Germans could only get their hands on a tiny fraction of the common shares, which would do them no good at all, either before or after the outbreak of war.

The 1930s had proved a difficult and unpredictable decade for Shell Transport and Trading – the Depression, the successful move into chemicals, the increasing politicization of oil as governments of both extremes came to power. Yet even if none of that had occurred, it would still have been a climactic time, for on l7 November 1936 Sir Henri Deterding retired. He was then a few months over 70 years old. His forty years in the oil business included twenty-nine as an executive director of Shell Transport and Trading (in modern terminology, a Group Managing Director) and thirty-six as General Manager (that is, president) of Royal Dutch. He had been a decisive, governing influence in Shell Transport, and in almost complete charge of Royal Dutch, for more than half his life: he had become a dominant force throughout the world-wide industry, earning the respect of almost everyone who knew him, and often their affection too.

Naturally, therefore, his departure engendered a considerable sense of loss; and yet it was not entirely unwelcome, for as he had grown older he had become rather an embarrassment to his colleagues.

Given all his achievements, this is an unhappy story, and one which has caused lasting distress within Shell Transport and Royal Dutch; but it is as much a part of the history as the more glorious days, and enough time has passed for it to be seen in some perspective.

Briefly, Deterding had become increasingly right-wing, bordering, some said, on the megalomaniac. His memoirs, published in 1934, were a masterpiece of vanity and egocentricity, reading as the self-portrait of an autocrat. For example, there was his talk with Mussolini – ‘a man who, regard him as you may, has shown a driving force almost unparalleled in running a country’. Deterding decided that this conversation:

proved that there were several points on which we saw eye to eye. We both agreed that the coping-stone of Education is a sense of discipline and a respect for prestige, lacking which no youth can be considered to have been properly educated at all… To people unacquainted with the Italian character his manner in public may seem at times to be a trifle theatrical, but what chiefly interested me at our meeting was that he seemed so direct. One felt that, if faced with a difficulty, he would get out his sledge-hammer and strike straight at its root.

So too would the ageing Sir Henri. When he wrote that, he was 68. Many people, as they grow older and see the world changing around them, become more conservative, with a hankering for ‘the good old days’ and a growing belief that things are not what they were. With Sir Henri the process was becoming somewhat marked. In the same text, he wrote this memorable sentence:

If I were dictator of the world – and please, Mr. Printer, set this in larger type – I WOULD SHOOT ALL IDLERS AT SIGHT.

But in a world where millions of working men and women were idle through no fault or desire of their own, Deterding’s colleagues (particularly in The Hague) were very sensitive to the public display of such sentiments, and still more so to his open admiration of what he perceived as the firm government which had recently been elected in Germany.

Back in 19l4, just before the outbreak of the Great War, Britain’s Admiral Fisher had written to Winston Churchill: ‘I have just received a most patriotic letter from Deterding to say he means you shan’t want for oil or tankers in case of war – Good Old Deterding! How these Dutchmen do hate the Germans!’

The new Lady Deterding was German. In a striking lack of imagination on Sir Henri’s part, she was also his former secretary; and because the Nazi regime was visibly restoring order to her country’s chaotic economy, she was very much in favour of it. So was Sir Henri, who saw the disciplined economic aspects of Nazism as the world’s most powerful weapon against Communism. The Nazis, eager even after his death to exploit the publicly-avowed support of this world-famous individual, virtually hijacked his funeral: Field Marshal Goering, chief of the German air force, sent a wreath; so did Hitler himself; and, even Germanizing his name, the functionary who represented them said as he laid the wreaths: ‘In the name and on the instructions of the Fuhrer, I greet thee, Heinrich Deterding, the great friend of the Germans.’

To his former colleagues both in Shell Transport and Royal Dutch, these events were intensely painful and hard to come to terms with.

Recalling his irrational and damaging price war in 1927 against buyers of Soviet oil, and his high-handed ‘colonial’ treatment of the left-wing Mexican government in 1934, some wondered privately if he might have been going mad. Probably he had not; rather, traits that he had always possessed – simplicity of outlook, clarity of goals, strength of character and forcefulness of speech – had become accentuated by old age. By then, their expression was crude and humiliating. In his youth and middle age, though, the same traits had been priceless business assets. Using them, he had rescued Shell Transport from virtually certain extinction, and had built its fortunes, together with those of Royal Dutch, to an level which simply would not have been credible when he began; so both as a friend and an inspiring leader, his passing was genuinely mourned.

EXTRACTS END

Deterding apparently felt very strongly on the subject of “idlers”. According to an article published on 18 February 1940, “Sir Henri Deterding had told Hitler that Mexico had the laziest population in the world, and rich prizes for Germany to grasp.”

Ironically, the driven ruthless man most responsible for the great enterprise which is Royal Dutch Shell Plc today, was also responsible for one of the darkest periods in its long history.

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singapore love: Rumor on the street is the Shell Vito project is over a year behind schedule, AND Shell plans to double down and award Whale to the same contractors in the coming weeks.
Must be some serious love going on between the Singaporeans and Shell decision makers....

Bonus Group: To uscitizen,
BRAZIL:
'PS - Shell is investing 2 billion a year into Brazil and already paying off'. Assuming $2Bn (you did not quote currency), that would just about cover Shell's share of the costs of replicants, operating expenses and of course managers' BONUSES!
$2Bn would represent approximately 10% of Shell's income in 2018.
https://reports.shell.com/annual-report/2018/consolidated-financial-statements/statement-of-cash-flows.php
FPSO unit cost: our initial case ($91bn total capex) assumed a cost of $2.5 billion for each of 13 FPSO units. However, our research shows a wide range of possibilities for this cost depending on the vessel configuration; plus the fact that Brazilian shipyards should get better at building them so the cost could reduce over time. Also the project might choose to lease rather than buy the FPSOs outright, which could improve economics for the consortium depending on the lease terms.
http://openoil.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/OO_br_Libra_narrative_1.0_161104.pdf

uscitizen: Bonus group, Contradict myself - lol. Poor guy - like I said do your own research - tell us what you find, you will look like the irrational uneducated poster you are. PS - Shell is investing 2 billion a year into Brazil and already paying off. Do you ever look anything up?

Bonus Group: To US Citizen. Thank you for your post of September 9th 2019 20:12. Congratulations on also being an avid reader of this blog. You are correct in my post of June 26th 2019 23:05 I did say that '..Shell had a ‘fire sale’ of a plethora of BG ‘dross’ assets in order to raise $30Bn to disguise the amount by which they had overpaid for BG Group.' More correctly, Shell had a ‘fire sale’ including a plethora of BG ‘dross’ assets in order to raise $30Bn to disguise the amount by which they had overpaid for BG Group. This does not detract from the fact that Shell did have a 'fire sale' in order to raise $30Bn. By my estimation Shell over paid for BG Group by about 30%. The Christmas boxes were very large, but the presents were very small. You contradict yourself when you say that you will not do my homework for me, but then tell me that the split of the $30Bn assets sold was 80:20 Shell:BG. Is that correct? If so, thank you that just goes to show how worthless those BG assets were, but then that is what you can expect from a Cappuccino and Belgian chocolate lifestyle company. Any comments about what the Brazil Asset are up to these days?

uscitizen: To Bonus Group - the large percentage of assets sold by Shell were non BG assets. I will not do your homework for you, but the split is 80/20. A great example of why you do not take what this sites protagonists post as good information. But go ahead, say I am wrong and also posting garbage, do your research and tell me the number of BG asset sales vs the 30 billion Shell raised thru asset sales.

John Donovan: MESSAGE FROM JOHN FOR THE ATTENTION OF BOGUS GROUP. I have received the information you kindly sent and have replied by encrypted email.

Bill Campbell Prelude Comment: I might write in more detail but I find it rather ironic that it was this website that was telling the world 6 or so years ago that this installation did not have risk levels as low as claimed and one of the principal risk drivers was the compact nature of a hazardous substances plant with not enough space to swing a cat in. Unless you are not aware I wrote to Shell Australia at the time giving them data from 8 existing or planned onshore LNG plants which varied from 80 to 100 hectares or on average 20 to 22 times the footprint of Prelude, could they tell me as a stakeholder with shares in the Company how they arrived at their ridiculously low number but can guess I assume that a reasonable explanatory reply was not forthcoming, as sure as eggs are eggs if this plant is currently having problems or if it has problems or major accident events in future it will be due to the force fitting a complex plant, with risk levels much above which they have published, on a postage stamp of a footprint.
God willing they will never live to regret their fraudulent overly optimistic claims, risk is based on reality not wishful thinking.
Bill

Thanks. Problem is that it's behind a paywall and despite it being a great publication for the oil industry, none of us retired folk wants to invest in a subscription.

FURTHER REPLY FROM JOHN

I have received the further Prelude information you have kindly provided and have replied by encripted email.

Bonus Group: Further to Bogus Group's post yesterday. I am absolutely appalled that a Senior Executive of Royal Dutch Shell plc should spout so much nonsense concerning the Prelude installation. The statement is redolent of Malcolm Brinded and his 'Touch F*ck All' policy, which led to the deaths of Keith Moncrieff and Sean McCue on Brent Bravo on 11th September 2003. What is boring is the continuous misleading spin and blather from the top of this company and their lackadaisical approach to safety. 'Chronic Unease' is a well known expression in the Oil and Gas Industry, and that state of mind is far from boring or routine. In fact nothing is either boring or routine in Oil and Gas operations. Rob Jager moved last year to the post of VP Prelude after spending thirteen years as Country Chair and VP for Shell New Zealand/Shell Taranaki, after Shell announced the sale of its New Zealand interests in March 2018. Jager clearly previously has spent too much time being 'laid back' in the fantasy land of Lord of the Rings, marvelling at New Zealand's scenery and wondering who will be entertaining him for his next luxury seafood dinner accompanied by a glass of chilled expensive New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

Bogus Group: PLEASE SEE REPLY FROM JOHN WHICH FOLLOWS THE COMMENT FROM BOGUS GROUP
More on Prelude article in Upstream.

I’m stunned by what can only be described as idiotic statements. Nothing like the utopia of self-aggrandisement without verification. What is Jagers’ level of technical and operational capabilities? I recall similar rhetoric from BG Group charlatans, with the “best in class” mentality and use of the most overstated expression ever to be used outside the education sector, all aimed at pleasing their taskmasters.
Ramp-up of Prelude and what Jager hopes will be decades of “uneventful” and “boring” operation.
“This will be a state where little or nothing happens. We have few if any alarms, no surprises and where things are running like clock work and we are effectively in autopilot,” he said.
“We will know when we have succeeded in this ambition because Prelude will be recognised as the most boring asset in Shell global portfolio our people will refer to it as the safest and most desirable place to work, and when the rest of the industry is knocking on our door to find out how we have achieved such a best in class outcome, especially for a facility as complex and unique as Prelude.”

REPLY FROM JOHN

Hello, I would be grateful if you could send me a copy of the article via [email protected] using an anonymous email address. I would pass it on to retired Shell EP experts for their assessment.

FG names Shell, Eni executives in $1bn bribery case – The Punch08 May 2019 11:43Google’Femi Asu with agency report
Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Eni SpA face additional corruption allegations over a Nigerian oil deal, after the Federal Government said in a London lawsuit that it believed a handful of executives, including Chief Executive …

FG names Shell, Eni executives in $1bn bribery case08 May 2019 08:09Punch Newspapers’Femi Asu with agency report
Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Eni SpA face additional corruption allegations over a Nigerian oil deal, after the Federal Government said in a London lawsuit that it believed a handful of executives, including Chief Executive …

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